Public Risk Perception of Nuclear Power in Serbia: Fear of Exposure to
Radiation vs
Abstract
Nuclear power (NP) remains one of the choices for increasing
environmental and social concerns related to energy needs due to its
relatively low level of emissions. At the other hand, serious problems
can arise as a result of potential accidents. For example, the nuclear
power plant (NPP) crisis in Fukushima Daichi (2011) has caused a great
deal of concern not only for the Japanese people, but also for the
world. Today, the consequences of this occasion continue in EU
countries. However, Serbia does not have an NP plant on its own, it has
about 15 NP stations around it. The Serbian Government, therefore,
wanted to know what the majority of its people think about nuclear
energy (NE) and possible consistency. The objective of this paper is to
present the results of the Serbian population assessment of the NP risk
perception of the trial. A series of 270 face-to-face interviews took
place in the public square of Belgrade in March 2019. A logistic
regression analysis was used to examine the cumulative effects of the
different risk factors. As a key result, it was found that almost all
respondents did not support the construction of the NP in Serbia. In
addition, this research identified several important variables that have
a significant impact on the perception of the public risk of NP.